FileMagnet

This is good for me at home, but you can;t use it at work. Even if you had a Mac at work you would have to be on the same wifi network. I still use it a lot, but I also use Readlle as I can use it at work with my PC.

A very useful feature that Apple enabled with its iPod line was the ability to use the player as a portable hard drive, allowing you to save files to it that could be retrieved from another computer. Apple did not enable the iPhone to do this, and short of jailbreaking your iPhone (and voiding its warranty!), there hasn't been an authorized way to do this until software developers created apps for this specific purpose. FileMagnet is one such app, though it is just for the Macintosh and is not PC-compatible.



To use FileMagnet, you need two components - the app loaded on your iPhone AND a companion application for your Macintosh (this desktop companion application is free). All of the file transferring is done via wifi, so your Mac must have wifi as well. The instructions included in the app on your iPhone explain well what you need to do to load documents on to it. Essentially, your iPhone and your Mac must be on the same wifi network, and the respective FileMagnet apps will "see" each other and connect, and any files you have selected on your Mac for transfer will be sent to your iPhone automatically.



You can view a number of different file types on your iPhone - at the time of this review, Microsoft Office, iWork, and PDF documents can be viewed, as well as images, movies, and sounds. Note that FileMagnet does not provide the ability to edit these files, only to view them.



FileMagnet does not restrict you to sending and receiving files with just one Mac. You can transfer files between your iPhone and any Mac you have as long as you install the desktop companion application on that Mac. This can be very handy if you simply want to transport files between your home Mac and your work Mac.



If you have a Mac and want the option to easily transfer files to your iPhone to carry with you for reference or later reading, this app will work for you. At the time of this review, there are other file transfer apps available on the App Store. Some offer more functionality and/or don't require a companion app for your computer in order to transfer files. Of course, you should research them to find what's best for you, but know that FileMagnet is a good choice app overall and does what it's meant to do just fine, and will be particularly useful if you have multiple Macs and want to use your iPhone to shuttle files between them.